That's amazing! Very cool colour. Something is ticking at the back of my brain from chemistry classes long ago; something about starch and iodine, would that be right?
You mean like
this? I tried it with Povidine Iodine, (1% Iodine in solution) but it does not contain KI (potassium iodide), so it didn't work - the turning blue part, it did turn black, however, but no tint of blue in any light source. Who knows what else it did do as I was only observing for color.
But if you are referring to the color change, it's due to her FO, which contains vanillin.
I wanted to show how much its darkened. 1st picture is the day I un-molded' 2nd pict is today, 16 days latter. FO & Vanilla FO.
I did find an interesting article in
Scientific American that addresses how starch contributes to bubbles in the presence of cold water, in an article about Boba Tea, of all things. But it also contains information about how starch decomposes in the presence of hot water, which I would never have considered, since in my experience starch thickens water even in the presence of heat, as that is exactly how I make Congee (heating water in gelatinous creating starch).
Another interesting tidbit when it comes to creating a gelatinous liquid from potatoes, rice or other starch, is that salt interferes with the way starch creates gelatin. (
Link) So another thing to think of when adding starch to soap to create more bubbles.
Perhaps it is the combination of starch and high salt, however, those two together might be what
Peachy was talking about. Put them together and the salt interferes with the starch, then that would likely decrease the expected bubbles, hence the bubble buster statement. Makes sense to me. I know if I add salt to my Congee concoction it does loose some of the gelatinous nature, depending on how much salt is added. So I tend to make it salt-free.
I'm not sure if or how Iodine itself contributes to hardening soap, though. I think that might be a misconception of what the
soap calculators list as Iodine, when in fact it does not indicate a presence of Iodine in oils or soap. The
iodine value in
soap calculators is NOT the amount of iodine in oil, but the propensity for oxidation based on what is called iodine-uptake.
If anyone can show me studies where Iodine itself is added to soap, as it pertains to hardness, I'd like to read them.
